Autodesk Blogs

Survey

January 27, 2015

Worked with this UK survey company this past year and glad to announce they have released their FREE plugin to publish Civil 3D designs for geometry and corridor models to their NRG Survey application for efficient data transfer for Survey Setting Out Engineers

Nice work and a good example of how two companies can work together to find a solution for our joint customers and users with a little API !

February 04, 2014

Following the scan of the site from the previous blog post, it was decided to work on a more detailed topographical survey of the site.

So getting my hands dirty again with some survey equipment I took a loan from Topcon again and this time I used a IS-3 total station

Back on site I was able to pick up from the GPS points I captured on my last trip as I was using the same logger.

I could then resection these points to position the equipment survey station and set myself on UK survey ordnance survey coordinates.

So running around the site with the robotic total station following me around was really easy and use of the video camera on board was handy when finding myself through the deep tree coverage.

There are many outputs when it comes to survey, but if you have worked in this method a simple csv file is perfect and simple to understand.

(FBK format is only required if analysis and error reductions are needed.)

Back in AutoCAD Civil 3D, I refined the figure prefix library that I have in the UK and Ireland country kit with some names like ‘BOB’ :) (bottom of bank)

When you bring data through survey in AutoCAD Civil 3D, if you have named your codes in the library, linework automatically draws. You can easily control the linework by adding additional linework coding on the instrument on site, or like me lazy or simply forget, adding these codes back in Civil 3D is easy enough and update the linework.

Hard to see here, but double coding this line from a fence line to a wall on the same point, rather than multiple points can be used.

Here now I can carry out a surface from the data, create contours …

Also I combined in the mapping of the area for a little context and used the map tools to boundary trim out the extents of the survey.

If you are using 2014, set your coordinate system and type ‘Geomap’ and bing mapping will stream down into your session.

Handy to check that you at least setup the equipment correctly.

Finishing off and creating a traditional 2D drawing output from the data with a grid, north point and drawing border, well that is automatic in most AutoCAD’s knowledge :)

Been great to pickup survey equipment again and to get out the wellies and trudge around a site and produce something to be used to get funds in place to give the kids somewhere to have fun again to camp out when it eventually dries out.

Many thanks to Topcon and Faro for the loan of the kit.

(other survey and scanning equipment are available and work well with Autodesk technologies, these are just what were made available to me for this exercise)

October 18, 2010

Lately I have come across a few companies trying to achieve nice looking maps over existing conditions, using the new Survey tools in AutoCAD Civil 3D.

After some initial work they end up with Points and Linework on screen, but it might not look as they prefere.

As many of you are already aware there are a lot of Styles and Settings to get a nice looking map. Point Styles, Survey Figureline Styles, Linework codeset, Description keys…. and where do we find them?

I did a small guide for a company which helped out and I thought I could publish the brief notes from that below. Please be aware that this is not a “step by step” guide, but it highlights some points a user might consider changing in their setup. // Ove

June 04, 2009

Yes - it IS the weird little man from Sweden that is back after a looooong time...

Luckily Jack has done a great job here and I like the fact he moved us to this interface instead! Much easier to add blogposts! Nice... ;-)

What I like most in the latest release in Civil 3D 2010 is, besides the cool Intersection tool, the enhanced Survey functionality. And it seems customers in my area also like this! GREAT!

If you haven't used this before - give it a try. You have a new "guide"/Wizard that really helps out. That one takes you through the different steps when importing data. It sets up the database, the network, etc etc and THEN, in the end, it keeps track of what you have done and when. This is called "Import Events"

If you select one of these Import Events in the Survey tab you get all information what was imported etc. See below.

As Civil 3D 2010 also automatically adds Linework, even from simple PENZD (etc) ASCII-textfiles, you also have the option to later re-import the whole file, or just process the linework ones again. This is great if you for example had to change the coding of the linework.

Give it a try! ;-)

I will put more Survey info here on the Blog, and I know Jack has sent some Surveyors out to get us some proper data to work on...